ACC Committed to Working on Bipartisan TSCA Reform

WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 25, 2012)
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The following statement can be attributed to the American Chemistry Council (ACC) regarding a U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works legislative markup and approval of an amended version of the "Safe Chemicals Act" on Wednesday, July 25, 2012.

"ACC and our
members
are committed to working with the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works to pursue
reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)
, and have demonstrated our commitment time and again. We have actively participated in numerous discussions to tackle difficult issues and offered extensive suggestions on how to improve TSCA. We also worked during the winter and spring with Democratic and Republican Members to help launch the first bipartisan TSCA negotiating process beginning from a blank slate.

"We are very disappointed that Senators Boxer and Lautenberg moved forward with a partisan markup of a bill that is inconsistent with the bipartisan negotiations that had just gotten underway in mid-June. We are also troubled that less than twenty-four hours before the markup Senator Lautenberg released a 174-page revised version of the Safe Chemicals Act.

"After a cursory review, we believe the bill is still fundamentally flawed in many critical areas. Specifically, the bill would establish an unworkable safety standard, and would require an enormous amount of additional government resources to implement. The bill would also dramatically increase the time it would take for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review new chemicals and undermine long-standing protections of trade secrets, seriously hampering innovations in new products and technologies.

"We encourage Democratic Senators to focus their efforts on working with their Republican colleagues to craft a new proposal that will attract bipartisan support and create a world-class regulatory system that provides for the safe use of chemicals, protects American jobs and maintains U.S. global leadership in innovation."